Over the years there has been much back and forth about how abortion affects a woman's mental health. From the feminism of the 1960s to the current "safe, legal and rare", we rarely hear about abortion without it being tied to a woman's state of mind. Back in the 1960s, women needed the right to abortion to get rid of their traditional role as mother and caretaker; today we hear countless politicians talk about how hard it is to make the decision to have an abortion.

Recently, mandatory counseling laws have been enacted to expand informed consent to, often, uninformed consent - telling women that abortion causes breast cancer or that she is killing a separate human being. Some of these mandatory counseling laws include provisions about how depressed a woman will be after an abortion (not how depressed she may be...she may also feel elated).

"The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult
women who have an unplanned pregnancy, the relative risk of mental
health problems is no greater if they have a single elective
first-trimester abortion or deliver that pregnancy," said Brenda Major,
PhD, chair of the task force. "The evidence regarding the relative
mental health risks associated with multiple abortions is more
uncertain."

The task force found that some studies indicate that some women do
experience sadness, grief and feelings of loss following an abortion,
and some may experience "clinically significant disorders, including
depression and anxiety." However, the task force found "no evidence
sufficient to support the claim that an observed association between
abortion history and mental health was caused by the abortion per se,
as opposed to other factors."

The report noted that other co-occurring risk factors, including
poverty, prior exposure to violence, a history of emotional problems, a
history of drug or alcohol use, and prior unwanted births predispose
women to experience both unwanted pregnancies and mental health
problems after a pregnancy, irrespective of how the pregnancy is
resolved. Failures to control for these co-occurring risk factors, the
task force noted, may lead to reports of associations between abortion
history and mental health problems that are misleading.

The report noted that women have abortions for many different reasons
and within different personal, social, economic and cultural
circumstances, all of which could affect a woman's mental state
following abortion. "Consequently," the task force wrote, "global
statements about the psychological impact of abortion can be
misleading."

According to the report, women terminating a wanted pregnancy, who
perceived pressure from others to terminate their pregnancy, or who
perceived a need to keep their abortion secret from their family and
friends because of stigma associated with abortion, were more likely to
experience negative psychological reactions following abortion.

Of course there are lots of women who regret having an abortion, some who become dedicated anti-choice crusaders, like Leslee Unruh. But that doesn't mean that abortion is the wrong choice for everyone and will permanently scare the psyche of every woman (or that only people who have had multiple abortions can support a woman candidate). In fact, if a woman freely chooses abortion and isn't judged for it, it sounds like she'll be much better off. So yes, the pro-choice movement should be involved in post-abortion counseling, but for my money, I'd prefer pre-abortion counseling. This counseling could not only make sure that a woman understands the medical procedure she's about to have, but make sure that she's not being coerced, that she has a support system, that if she has drug, alcohol or violence problems in her life that she is referred for help. These are the efforts we can make if we're interested in improving mental health for women having abortions.

Not like you haven't heard it before (especially if you were hanging out with me this weekend) but vasectomies are totally safe. And because this is my blog, I'll tell you my opinion on vasectomies: I'm all for them. No one really wants me to go into it, but here's a quick rundown, from my perspective. Heterosexual women have menstrual cycles, and all that brings. They also bear the brunt of contraception, from what I gather. Further, they are the ones carrying and birthing children, often breastfeeding them. I don't feel it's an outrageous request for men involved with these women to consider vasectomies as fairly painless and totally reversible procedure. The article talks about how men are squeamish about their boy parts, a concern for which I have little sympathy. Somehow testicles became sacred, while women's fallopian tubes, uterii & etc became medically available. It's a procedure that Jamaican men, for example, do not use. You've heard it before.

Speaking of uteri, you may know my obsession with this from my previous posts, but the Picture of the Day from DCist a few days ago was a woman carrying three fetuses in her two uterii. Awesome!